2 Dec 2021
Compuco Response
3yI was sad to read this feedback but thank you for sharing it.
First off, it's nice to see that you appreciate the great team of people that we have here at Compuco, after all, the company is only made up of the people in it! We have a fantastic team who go above and beyond everyday for our clients and each other. As you state, you are a current member of the team so I can only assume you are a part of that and I want to say thank you for all your efforts. They are appreciated not only by me, but by everyone around you and the clients who rely on us.
I thought however it would be important to address your concerns in detail.
It is true that the attrition in 2021 was higher than in previous years. A lot has been written about the high level of employee turnover during that period resulting from changes brought on by the pandemic in the media and many are calling this the "great resignation". With the world of work changing so drastically over the past 18 months many people are rightly re-evaluating their working life and exploring new opportunities. We have not been immune to that effect and unfortunately have lost some great people along the way. That said, the facts were not quite correctly stated here and the team was somewhat bigger than mentioned in your message.
We certainly punch above our weight in terms of the quality of the people in the team and of course this means that some will get snapped up when it's their time.
A few of the people leaving had been with the team for 4-5 years plus, which for me personally of course was bittersweet. I’m personally sad to lose people who I still to this day call my friends, and it reflects the great commitment they have made to get us to where we are today, but also I'm immensely proud to see those members of the team go on to exciting new opportunities with huge names such as Xero, WhatsApp, Google and HelloFresh to name a few. For me personally that's part of what we can offer to a new member of the team, to have exposure (sometimes outside of your comfort zone) in a fast paced startup environment to grow and learn new skills which will put them in a great place for their future careers.
You mention that you think this attrition is mainly down to wages. It is true that some of the people who have left have gone on to larger earnings than we can offer. Unfortunately as a company that works primarily with non-profit/charitable organisations we have to work within a certain budget envelope to be sustainable. There will always be companies who can offer more than we can and all we can do is do our best to be competitive whilst offering a healthy work/life balance, a supportive, collaborative work environment and the knowledge that you are having a positive impact on the world. Wages that can be expected are agreed with any applicant transparently when they apply but we understand that our rates may not be right for everyone.
I would add that we attempt to have an open and transparent appraisal and promotion policy, with 2 application windows per year to apply for promotions and pay reviews. This process is however never perfect and we will continue to work hard to improve the detail of our competency matrix and to provide guidance and support to managers to coach and develop their teams.
You are correct that laptops had been a problem due to issues with a generation of Macbooks. I’m pleased to say that this has been solved and all new employees now receive the latest models.
With respect to communicating company strategy, I agree, building and communicating a long term strategy is hard, and perhaps we still have some way to go to find the best ways to communicate this to all members of the team, especially with a distributed team operating from around the world!
What we have done so far is that we operate OKRs with a set of 5 key objectives for each financial year, which will contribute to our overall longer term strategy. These are reviewed monthly and progress communicated quarterly at our monthly “all hands'' meetings.
We have product aspirations for both the short term (mainly driven by client projects), medium term (where we have invested in new products or platforms) and long term, some of which of course cannot be published here (quite yet!), but are set out in our OKRs. Of course, the key specific decisions we take within those OKRs can change as the year progresses and perhaps this is the grey area within which you have concerns.
I’m pleased that over 75% of the team in our December 2021 staff survey agreed or strongly agreed that they received enough information about Compuco’s goals and strategies during the previous period but of course that leaves 25% of the company who feel that they do not agree nor disagree, or disagree with this sentiment so there is obviously more to do here.